How can distinctly different styles of painting still have something in common?

The newest exhibit at the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts intends to explore just that with the solo exhibitions of three contemporary painters in the galleries, through Sept. 26.

In the Main Gallery East, Springboro artist Malcolm Christhilf offers his compositions of precisely rendered hand-held objects in elegantly composed still lifes.

Shiny marbles, rubber gloves and plastic cups define the body of his latest series thriving on the color connections between arranged objects. Yet the sheer simplicity of these arrangements belies the countless hours of layered application only careful observation can achieve.

With a master’s degree in art and fine arts from the University of California, Berkley, Christhilf teaches painting, drawing and design at Edinboro University. He has participated in numerous juried exhibitions throughout the United States and was most recently honored with a solo exhibition at the Weyer-Sampson Art Gallery at Thiel College.

Like Christhilf, Jean Plough of Philadelphia finds inspiration in the bold color of her paintings in the Hoyt West Gallery. Although where the two depart is Plough’s observation of the “inner world,” influenced by her practice in meditation. She describes her paintings as “states of mind” that cross the boundaries between shapes and forms to the dynamic relationships occurring within and around them.

Educated at University of the Arts in Philadelphia and Corcoran School of Art in Washington, Plough is a full-time painter in Philadelphia. Her works have been exhibited at the JMS Gallery in Philadelphia, National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, Pleiades Gallery in New York, Rossler Gallery in Munich, Germany, and various other venues.

Linda Wallen’s dreamlike paintings might appear to be somewhere in between Christhilf’s photorealistic recreations and Plough’s meditative interpretations in the memories revisited in her egg tempera/gold leaf images. Although now a resident of Pittsburgh, Wallen grew up on a farm in South Bend, Ind., and is continually influenced by the memories of her childhood.

They re-emerge each time she prepares her media, hand-grinding the dry powdered pigments into egg yolk, and begin to form the composition before the brush hits the painting’s surface. Her pigments include malachite, ochres and actual dirt from the farm in South Bend.

An art instructor at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Wallen studied at Indiana University at Bloomington and the University of Iowa. She organized and founded the International Center for the Arts in Le Pouldu, France, and has rendered portraits for numerous clients including J&L Steel, Mellon Bank, Shadyside Hospital and others.

Her work can be found at the Gallery on 43rd Street in Pittsburgh, as well as the Third Street Gallery in Carnegie, Pa.

(This column was written by Patricia McLatchy, exhibition coordinator at the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts.)

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